The John Fante Reader

It's not every day that a writer, almost unheard of in his lifetime, reemerges twenty years after his death as a voice of his generation. But then again, there aren't many writers with such irrepressible genius as John Fante. Born in Denver in 1909, Fante grew up in an Italian American family that was plagued by the prejudice and poverty so common among working-class immigrants of the time. But Fante's unflinching eye was meant for the City of Angels, and at age twenty-one he moved west to the town that would become his lifelong home. In semiautobiographical novels like The Road to Los Angeles, Dreams from Bunker Hill, and Ask the Dust -- his most acclaimed work -- Fante captured the rhythms of Los Angeles life in prose that spans the gap between the spare style of Hemingway and the gritty urban dialect of the Beats. The John Fante Reader is the important next step in the reintroduction of this influential literary writer to modern audiences. Combining excerpts from his novels and stories, as well as his never-before-published letters, this collection is the perfect primer on the work of a writer, underappreciated in his time, who is finalty taking his place in the pantheon of twentieth-century American writers.